Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, let me thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Kelly) for doing this and helping bring us along this evening. There is nobody that went at it with Mr. Kelly more vigorously in the Ways and Means Committee than Bill Pascrell. After the battle, the ensuing argument, we would be out to dinner that night, and Bill would have a drink and would say: Kelly is all right. I like Kelly. I think that is the way he saw the Ways and Means Committee and, in fact, the way he saw the world. This Special Order is in honor of our very important colleague, so we rise tonight in honor of Bill. By the way, Mike, calling him Bill Paterson, that is appropriate. Anybody that has ever been to Paterson, they were just like him. Nobody talked softly. I was there two or three times. Everybody yelled. I thought that is the order of the day; that is the way they discuss issues there. He was from Paterson. I remember when he jumped out of his seat when the Secretary General of NATO mentioned Paterson, New Jersey. That is exactly who he was. If you came to Paterson, you had to visit the sites where Alexander Hamilton had been. Even though we were doubtful that he had been to all those sites, Bill said he was, so we went to visit. There were humorous moments. After he came back with a pretty bad diagnosis a couple years ago from a doctor, he said: They told me to stop smoking cigars. A couple nights later, I saw him smoking a cigar.…”